


A Little Louder

by semperama



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Aftercare, Bondage, Caning, M/M, Safeword Use, Safewords, Verbal Humiliation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 06:10:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4553775
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperama/pseuds/semperama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris has to use his safeword. Zach proves he's not disappointed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Little Louder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rabidchild67](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabidchild67/gifts).



It’s not the pain that does it. In fact, the pain is helping. Every strike of the cane drags his attention away from Zach’s voice, bringing him a moment of sweet relief. He flinches and mewls and pulls against the ropes binding his wrists, but he still finds himself looking forward to the next impact before it comes. His mind clings to the growing, throbbing ache in between hits.

It’s not enough to block Zach out. It’s not enough to overshadow the sting of his voice.

“Listen to you, Pine.” Not even ‘Chris’. Just his last name. Impersonal. Spat out like an accidental bite of spoiled food. Zach trails the cane across the skin of Chris’s ass like a caress, but Chris isn’t fooled. “You’re pitiful. Why can’t you just lay there and take it, instead of whining like a little bitch?”

Another hit. Chris cries out, turns his face into the mattress to muffle it just a second too late. He rolls his forehead against the sheets, wiping away the sweat that has been threatening to drip into his eyes. He feels the bed dip, like Zach planted a knee on it, and then two fingers are tracing the tender marks on the backs of his thighs, the touch soothing and painful all at once. 

“It’s too bad silence seems to be completely beyond you,” Zach sighs. The disappointment in his voice makes Chris gasp and squeeze his eyes shut. He keeps his face pressed into the bed, afraid that the wetness on his cheeks might be tears and not sweat, afraid to let Zach see. “I think I’d enjoy this more if you could be. Because you’re just my canvas to paint, aren’t you? That’s all you are. And a canvas isn’t supposed to make any noise.”

Chris feels cool wood roll to rest against his shin, telling him that Zach has put the cane down for now. That shouldn’t worry him as much as it does. The bed shifts against, and then Zach’s hands come to rest on his ass, giving it a rough squeeze. There is a puff of warm breath against his skin, and that’s all the warning Chris gets before Zach bites down hard on the flesh of his left cheek. Chris lets out a startled _ahh_ , but the pain floods him with relief. The pain in his body is good. The pain is his chest is bad. And if Zach is using his mouth to bite, then he can’t use it to hurt him in all the ways he’s not sure he can endure much longer.

It’s not Zach’s fault, Chris tries to tell himself. They’re both still new to this. The boundaries are still fuzzy, and Chris knows from how things were in the beginning that sometimes it takes a little bit for him to warm up to something. It was hard not to feel like a deviant every time Zach hit him at first. There were days when he thought the internalized wrongness of it would never fade, no matter how tightly Zach held him after or murmured sweet words in his ear. But now he loves it. He loves the tightly bound threads of love and pain that weave their way through this relationship. He loves the intimacy of it. Zach has permission to hurt him. Chris trusts him that much.

So of course he trusted him with this too. _”How would you feel about me...talking a little more when we’re playing? Saying, uhh, mean things?”_ Chris had laughed it off, told him to go for it. After all, Zach had already been doing a little light name-calling—slut, whore, that kind of thing—and it only made everything seem more heightened, more intense. If Chris had known it would feel like this, then maybe he wouldn’t have been so flippant. 

“You want to be good for me, don’t you, Christopher?” Zach says against Chris’s skin. He traces his tongue across the bite marks he made a moment ago. 

“I’m sorry,” Chris rasps. The apology is a reflex. Like it would be if he broke one of Zach’s dishes or shrunk one of his shirts in the wash. 

Zach chuckles darkly, and the bed shifts as he moves away again. Then, there are fingers twisting in Chris’s hair, pulling his head up off the mattress. “You’re _sorry_? What good does that do me? How about you quit being sorry and start being obedient?” He leans in and nips at Chris’s earlobe, a quick, sharp pin prick, a tiny sting that isn’t enough. “Now, I’m going to hit you one more time, baby, and I want you to be _quiet_.”

“Zach, I don’t—”

“Oh, I know you don’t think you can do it.” The warmth of Zach’s body retreats again, as does the cane that was resting against Chris’s leg. “And you probably can’t do it. I don’t know why I’m setting myself up for disappointment. But let’s call it an experiment, shall we? To see if my wanton little whore can control himself for once.”

Panic uncurls itself in Chris’s chest, making the blood rush in his ears and tunneling his vision. He’s not going to be able to do it. He won’t be able to do it, and Zach will be disappointed in him. And maybe Zach will _leave_ him, find someone who can give him what he really wants. Because as hard as Chris has tried, as much as he’s wanted to please Zach and for this to be good for him, he has failed. 

He can hear himself breathing hard, too hard, and Zach must hear it too, because he touches his ankle lightly, his fingers a little trembly. Chris wishes he could see his face.

“You ready, babe?” His voice seems gentler now, but it’s too little too late. All Chris can hear is the dissatisfaction from a moment ago. He tries to swallow away the lump in his throat, but it doesn’t work. A sob tears it’s way out of his mouth. 

He doesn’t want to say it, knows it’ll only disappoint Zach more, but he has to, he _has_ to.

“Red,” he gasps. His tongue feels thick and lazy in his mouth, but he says it again anyway, just in case Zach didn’t hear him. “Red, red. Zach.”

Zach’s fingers are on Chris’s bindings so fast it’s as if he flew. He unties Chris in record time, and Chris squeezes his eyes shut as he lets Zach roll him over onto his back. He can’t bear to see the expression on Zach’s face. It’s not going to be good. He knows it isn’t.

But Zach is climbing into bed with him, pulling him into his arms, stroking his hair and his back and holding him tight.

“I’m sorry,” he’s whispering, but Chris has no idea why. What does he have to apologize for? “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Chris. Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

Chris is shaking. He pushes his face into the crook of Zach’s neck and clings to him like a child, afraid to let go. If he lets go, Zach might get up and leave and never come back. 

“Did I hurt you?” Zach asks. Chris can feel him starting to pull away to look at him, and he starts to panic again, tightening his grip so Zach can’t get away yet. 

“No,” he says, even though it’s not entirely the truth. Chris is hurting, but not the way Zach thinks. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to...I’m sorry I ruined…”

“Hey, no, stop.” This time Zach doesn’t let Chris cling to him. He pulls away, and Chris can feel his eyes on him, but he refuses to look at him. He’s still too scared of what he’ll see. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Chris. Don’t apologize.”

Chris shakes his head. “I did. I couldn’t...you wanted me to…”

Zach curses under his breath. His warm hands frame Chris’s face, and his thumbs stroke across his cheekbones, making his eyelashes flutter. Slowly, tentatively, Chris opens his eyes. The room swims, and he blinks fast to keep the tears at bay. Zach doesn’t look angry at all though. In fact, he looks terrified. He’s looking at Chris like he’s a precious heirloom that he just dropped on the floor, shattering the pieces everywhere. 

“I screwed up, Chris,” he says shakily. “I should have eased into it more. I should never have...Fuck, I’m so sorry.”

The fog is starting to clear out of Chris’s brain. The shimmery, floaty headspace he gets into when he and Zach are playing has started to subside, and he can see that Zach is legitimately upset. Jarringly upset. And not upset with Chris.

“I thought I was letting you down,” Chris murmurs. The memory of it still makes his chest ache. 

“ _No_. Don’t ever think that.” Zach’s hand slides around to grip the back of his neck. “The only way you could ever disappoint me is by forcing yourself to do something you don’t want to do. Chris, this is only going to work if we take care of each other.”

Chris shakes his head, not understanding. Zach sighs and gathers him close to his chest again, his hand going to the back of Chris’s head, fingers stroking through the hair there. It feels good, soothing, and Chris closes his eyes and focuses on it.

“I don’t want to do anything that hurts you, baby. Not the bad kind of hurt. Because if I hurt _you_ , it hurts _me_. That’s what a safeword is for. You have to let me know when it stops being good, so I can stop. So neither of us gets hurt.”

It makes so much sense that Chris can’t believe he hasn’t been thinking about it that way. He has been seeing his role as one that consists completely of submission, of doing his best to give Zach everything he wants and more. It never occurred to him that not establishing boundaries for himself could actually _hurt_ Zach. 

“How can I enjoy this if I have to second-guess whether you’re enjoying it?” Zach murmurs. “I want to take care of you. I want you to feel loved and safe.”

Chris knows that, intellectually. He knows that Zach only likes hitting him because he knows Chris likes it, that hurting him is only fun because it’s a good hurt. He underestimated how hard it must be to be in Zach’s position and to have to walk this tightrope between too much and just right. Just because Chris is the one under the cane doesn’t mean he’s the only one with something on the line.

He sniffles. “Christ, I’m an idiot.”

Zach sighs, then lets out a tentative chuckle. “I think we both dropped the ball on this one.”

“I really did think I would like it,” Chris says as he pulls away again, meeting Zach’s eyes. He needs him to know that he was never lying to him. “I just...it was hard, feeling like I was...like I was disappointing you.”

A shadow passes across Zach’s face, and he reaches out to touch Chris’s mouth, his fingers resting reverently against his lips. “It was just acting, Chris. I...I love the sounds you make. I would never want you to stop. I just thought that the...the shame aspect was…”

He trails off, but Chris doesn’t need him to finish. He gets it. Half an hour ago, he would have expected that he’d get off on the shame too. But it turns out that he doesn’t. And now they know. And really all Chris wants to do is move on and not think about it anymore. They can learn from this mistake, and hopefully never make it again, but right now he just wants to feel close to Zach again.

“I need to feel you,” he says, tugging at one of Zach’s thighs. “Will you fuck me?”

“Are you sure?” Zach asks.

Chris nods. “Please.”

“Okay, baby.” Zach rolls them gently, settling himself in between Chris’s legs. “But only if you promise _not_ to be quiet. I want to hear just how much you’re enjoying it, okay?”

That is not a request that Zach is going to have to make twice. Chris is panting in anticipation before Zach even pushes the first slick finger inside of him. He can’t hold back the breathy whimpers that slip past his lips when Zach bends one of his legs back toward his chest and his fingers trip across the welts on the back of his thigh, or the way those whimpers lengthen into moans when Zach adds a second finger and crooks them just right. It never ceases to amaze him just how good it always feels with Zach. He plays Chris like an instrument, knowing just where to touch, how to move. Zach makes him feel like his body is full of beautiful music.

And to think he could have lost this, just because he was too scared to say one stupid little word.

“God, Chris.” Zach surges up to bite gently at Chris’s neck, then speak into his ear. It forced his fingers deeper, and Chris lets his legs fall open wider, desperate for more. “You’re so hot, you know that? I love how eager you always are for it. I love how you don’t hold anything back.”

Chris can feel himself flush with a mixture of embarrassment and pleasure. Zach hums and licks sweat off his sticky neck, then shifts to press their foreheads together. They breathe together for a moment, while Zach’s fingers continue moving inside him, working him open, and then Chris tilts his chin up and presses their mouths together. It’s the first time they’ve kissed since before Zach tied him up, and it feels like the final suture on the wound that their little disaster made. Zach’s mouth is soft and full of affection. Full of healing. 

“Come on," Chris gasps, breaking the kiss. “I’m ready. Need you.”

“I need you too,” Zach says. The words catch Chris off guard, but he is grateful for them. Zach is so in control of himself that sometimes it’s hard to remember that he craves Chris as much as Chris craves him. It’s always good to have a reminder.

Zach removes his fingers and takes a moment to slick himself up, and then his cock is nudging at Chris’s hole. Chris arches into it, tired of waiting.

“Talk to me,” Zach says, obviously determined to make Chris wait a little longer. “Tell me you want it.”

“Zach,” Chris groans. “Come on, want you, want you so bad. Want you inside me. Want you to fill me up.”

And fill him up Zach does, in one smooth push that is just shy of too much, too fast. Chris loves the intrusion though, loves the burn and the feeling of not being able to adjust for a moment. He grips Zach’s shoulders, then slides his fingers up into his hair, dragging him in for another kiss—this one far less restrained than the last. 

Zach doesn’t go easy on him, and Chris is glad for it. It would feel wrong if Zach was gentler than normal just because their scene got messed up. It would make Chris feel worse. He has never enjoyed being treated like glass, and he loves it that Zach isn’t afraid to make him sob and writhe and to keep him constantly on the edge of too much. 

“You feel so fucking good,” Zach tells him. He thumbs one of Chris’s nipples and then hooks a hand over his shoulder to pull him down harder onto his cock. Chris shouts, plants his heel in the small of Zach’s back to encourage him. “That’s it, baby. Let me hear you. Let the fucking _neighbors_ hear you.”

It’s obvious that Zach is using this as an apology, trying to reinforce that he wants Chris to feel like he can be as loud as he wants, that he didn’t really mean it when he was scolding him for it. The transparency of his efforts doesn’t make Chris any less grateful though. The pain and the panic has faded now, and he just feels desired. This is the perfect reminder that Zach still wants him and loves him the way he is—latent masochistic tendencies and inability to keep quiet and all. 

Chris’s cock has been ignored until now, but he’s rock-hard and leaking when Zach takes him in hand. He wrings him roughly, almost _too_ roughly, but it’s just what Chris needs. It’s going to be over too fast. 

“Zach,” Chris says, bucking up into his hand. “Zach, Zach.”

“Are you going to come?” Zach is speaking into his ear again, his voice low and jagged. His tongue traces the shell of Chris’s ear, making him shiver and whine. “Tell me. I want to hear you say it.”

“Oh fuck, I’m gonna come, Zach,” he slurs. “I’m gonna…”

He cries out as he shoots—over Zach’s fist, over his own chest. Dimly, he’s aware that Zach is still muttering encouragements and praises into his ear— _so fucking hot, Chris, love you so much_ —but he’s too busy floating on a cloud of bliss to do much more than clutch at Zach’s back while Zach pounds into him, hard, hard, too hard, until his words turn into a string of curses and he floods Chris with warmth, stilling and shuddering against him. 

They cling to each other for a long time after that, satisfied and sticky and breathing hot into each other’s necks. Zach’s fingers are petting the angry red stripes on Chris’s legs again, and even the feather-light touches make Chris tremble.

“I love you,” Zach says, turning his head to kiss Chris’s temple. “I love you, I love you.”

“I love you too,” Chris sighs. “Thank you.”

Zach huffs out a short laugh and pushes himself up on his elbows to look Chris in the eye. “Thank you for what?”

“For taking care of me,” Chris says, reaching up to gently push Zach’s hair off his face. “I’m going to do a better job of taking care of you in the future, I swear.”

Zach’s expression softens, and he leans in for a gentle kiss. “I know you will,” he says, when he pulls away. “We’re going to be okay.”

“Better than okay,” Chris corrects.

Zach nods and then kisses him again, lingering this time. It still feels like too soon when he pulls away, wincing a little as he slides out of Chris. “I should go get something for your legs—”

Before he can move, Chris wraps his arms tight around his neck, pulling him back down. “Not yet. Stay here a little while longer.”

Zach laughs, but he doesn’t wriggle away. He settles back against Chris’s chest, disregarding the mess between them.

“Fine,” he sighs, like it’s a hardship. Chris knows better. “But just a little while.”


End file.
